You bet we like pollies bearing hot pokers

Page Tools

Retirement is the ideal time for a politician to speak
his mind. The risks are low, unlike the state's relentless pursuit
of gambling income, writes Terry Lane.

Outbreaks of bipartisanship in our parliaments are rare and when
they happen we take it for granted that whatever it is that the
pollies agree on won't be good for the rest of us.

Only two issues come to mind on which politicians of all stripes
are guaranteed to hold the same opinion - the fatness of their pay
packets and the economic benefits of gambling.

So when one politician stands up and says that the time has come
to bring the gambling business under control we are not surprised
that his Tory colleagues and his opponents in the pseudo-socialist
party start squawking that without gambling we'll all be
rooned.

The nastiest insult to Robin Cooper, the state Liberal MP who
reckons the time has come to remove the scourge of pokies, is that
he has conveniently left it until his last term in parliament to
make his stand. Does that invalidate his concern? Like many of us,
he has been appalled at the steady procession of thieves and
embezzlers through the courts telling pitiful stories of gambling
addiction.

Cooper refers specifically to three recent cases of women
stealing millions to poke into the pokies. This is something a
Government addicted to gambling revenue doesn't want to hear, which
is why the Victorian Government has now put an end to independent
investigations into the social effects of gambling.

The Gambling Research Panel was abolished in December because
the Government didn't care for its reports. The Opposition
spokesman on gambling, Ken Smith, said, at the time, that the
Government was "crazy" to abolish the panel and that it should be
reinstated; but when Cooper says it is time to admit that
legalising pokies was a community disaster, Smith says he "is
disappointed" that the MP "seems fit to talk against our position
(presumably that pokies are here to stay) at this stage of his
career".

This is precisely the right stage of a politician's career for
him to take a principled stand. He is not compromised by fear of
losing preselection or not winning the next election. For once in
his political career he is free to say what he thinks, and, if we
can't expect an outbreak of honesty at this point, when can we?
Some wag has said that there is nothing more dangerous than a
politician who doesn't want to be re-elected, to which we might add
that there is also nothing more cheering than the sight of a polly
who doesn't have to keep his mouth shut so as not to jeopardise
donations from powerful interests.

Needless to say, the politicians still beholden to the gambling
companies from whom they take donations trot out the old furphy
about the job-creating power of the pokies. The latest fanciful
figure comes from Smith, who reckons the one-armed bandits create
80,000 to 100,000 jobs.

Rubbish, says the Productivity Commission in its hard-nosed
report on the economics of gambling: "The gains in terms of
employment and activity are small when account is taken of the
impact on other industries that are losing the consumer's dollar to
gambling."

The commission reckons that even small gains are worthwhile
because that is what capitalism is all about, but, when a few jobs
come at the cost of considerable misery, we may well ask if that is
the best way to do it.